capacity and diversity of product, was not invented until about 1847,
by Mr. Aiken, of New Hampshire. A period of development then set in
that continues to the present time. The needles by cam mechanism
were made independently operative in a circular carrier; narrowing
and widening devices to produce pouches, such as the heels and toes
of stockings, were added, as was also feeding mechanism for the
introduction of different colored yarn, or a reinforcing thread. Such
machines, of 1868 and 1870, would form a stocking or undergarment
well fitted to the form; but they required the constant attention of
a skilled knitter, until pattern mechanism was introduced to control
the time of introduction of the colored or additional thread, and the
place for formation of the narrowed or widened web. In forming the heel
and toe pockets, a part of the needles are thrown out of action, and
the movements to operate the active needles are changed from round and
round, or circular work, to reciprocating. At each reciprocation one or
more needles, at the end of the series, are rendered inactive, until
one half the required pocket is formed; then they are successively
returned to action, and circular knitting resumed. It may be also an
additional thread is introduced to reinforce the wearing qualities of
the heel and toe, or a differently colored yarn may be thrown in to
give figure, but all such movements are now automatically controlled
by a pattern mechanism. The ribbed leg portion of a stocking is formed
either in the same machine that fashions the foot or in a separate
machine to which the foot is transferred, but in either case the
pattern mechanism again controls.
[Illustration: KNITTING IN THE OLD WAY.]
Within the last twenty years this art has been so greatly improved,
especially in the hosiery line, that the automatic machine of to-day
passes through the entire operation of knitting the article, finishing
it off, and starting afresh without other aid than a supply of yarn.
Moreover, the machine now to be considered practical must be so
constructed that it will continue thus to operate without repairs or
loss of time from month to month; and its daily output will average
more than the old hand machines could accomplish in a week. By hand
knitting one hundred loops could be formed per minute; by Lee’s machine
as many as fifteen hundred were possible in the same time; but to-day,
the automatic machine will average between 300,000 and 400,000 loops,
and at the same time will produce a finer web, shaped to fit the form
of the wearer.
Such comparisons reveal the vitally important progress made in the
knitting industry, through which most of our underwear, stockings,
scarfs, neck-comforts, and woolen gloves are supplied. The labor and
time saving devices developed in this class of machines, and the fact
that unskilled workmen may “tend” from fifteen to twenty of them,
largely accounts for the universal adoption of warm and comfortable
wearing apparel by all classes of society.
The number of patents granted on textile machinery during the
nineteenth century furnishes an index to the progress made. Prior to
1800, less than one hundred patents were granted in the United States,
while since that time, and up until July, 1895, about 15,200 patents
were issued, covering tangible and material improvements over the old
structures. The beneficent effects of these inventions are attested
by the wonderful and continuous reduction in cost to the consumer of
all kinds of textile fabrics. For the manufacturer, these have made
possible increased production in a given time with less manual labor.
When it is remembered that the labor cost is about one half the total
cost of production of textile fabrics, it will be apparent that the
beneficial effects of any labor-saving device are felt as well by the
consumer as the producer.
In 1870 the number of textile establishments in the United States was
3035, giving occupation to 146,897 employees, and consuming annually
359,420,829 pounds of textile fibres, while in 1890 the number of
establishments had increased to 4114, employing 511,897 hands, and
consuming the enormous amount of 1,572,548,933 pounds of fibres;
representing progress and growth in the textile arts not excelled by
any other manufacturing industry.
Food and clothing constitute the primary wants of man. The former
grew ready for his use as a natural product of the soil. The latter
he had to produce by artificial means to afford that protection which
nature failed to provide. Next to agriculture, therefore, man’s early
attention was directed to securing a covering for the body. Looking
back through the vista of years dimmed by the mists of very remoteness,
we find the animal and vegetable kingdoms destined to contribute to his
needs. There were the blue flax-fields; cotton-bolls, scattered like
powdered snow about the land, coquetting in wanton abandon with winds
tempered by an all-wise Power to the shepherd-watched sheep; goats
roaming the vale of Cashmere; silk-worms of Ceres, and the grasses of
spring, overflowing with allurements of assistance for his adornment.
With these essentials has man wrought a mighty miracle. The genius
of Industrial Art, awakened by the fascinating influence of Nature,
invoked the Goddess of Invention, approaching her temple not with loud
acclaim, as marked the herculean strides in other arts and sciences,
but modestly, though tenaciously and most effectually. For not more is
woman emancipated by the sewing machine than both sexes by the doing
away of the spinning-wheel, the household knitter, and hand-worked
loom. Not more do electricity and steam power facilitate the various
occupations of man than do the many textured fabrics add to his needs.
[Illustration: KNITTING IN THE NEW WAY.]
In all the phases of social life is this industry manifest. If the
banquet hall is warmed and lighted by electricity, so, also, is it
adorned with tapestries, silken and artistic, napery surpassingly
smooth, and laces intricately wrought.
How like a fairy tale reads the evolution of textile progress!
Conceptions, infinite in range and variety, alike pleasing to the eye
and gratifying to vanity, have been spun, woven, knit, and embroidered,
until, standing as we do at the dawn of another century, upon the
summit of unparalleled achievements, we ask, “Can the mind conceive,
the heart desire, or the hand execute more.”
THE CENTURY’S RELIGIOUS PROGRESS
BY GEORGE EDWARD REED, S.T.D., LL.D.,
_President Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa._
The closing years of the nineteenth century, both in Europe and the
United States, are characterized by a religious life as phenomenal with
respect to development and influence as those of the eighteenth were
phenomenal for lethargy and decline. “Never,” says a writer in the
North British Review, “has a century risen on England so void of soul
and faith as that which opened with Anne (1702), and reached its misty
noon beneath the second George (1732–1760),—a dewless night succeeded
by a sunless dawn. The Puritans were buried and the Methodists were not
born.” In this opinion, all historians and essayists concur.
Among the clergy were many whose lives were of the Dominie Sampson
order, described in Scott’s “Guy Mannering”—men whose lives were the
scandal and reproach of the church; who openly taught that reason is
the all-sufficient guide; that the Scriptures are to be received only
as they agree with the light of nature; pleading for liberty while
running into the wildest licentiousness. Montesquieu, indeed, did not
hesitate to charge Englishmen generally with being devoid of every
genuine religious sentiment. “If,” he says, “the subject of religion is
mentioned in society, it excites nothing but laughter. Not more than
four or five members of the House of Commons are regular attendants at
church.”
From the colleges and universities, the great doctrines of the
Reformation were well-nigh banished, a refined system of ethics,
having no connection with Christian motives, being substituted for the
principles of a divinely revealed law.
On every side faith seemed to be dying out; indeed, would have died out
but for the tremendous reformation in life and morals induced by the
self-denying and heroic labors of the Wesleys and their coadjutors,
to whom, more than to any beside, England owes her salvation from a
relapse into barbarism,—a service which in later years won for the
Wesleys a memorial in Westminster Abbey.
On the Continent, religious conditions were no better. In France the
masses were yet reeling amid the excesses of the Revolution. Voltaire
and Rousseau were the oracles and prophets of their times,—the popular
idols of the hour. Voltaire, indeed, openly boasted that he alone
would laugh Christianity out of the court of public opinion, declaring
the whole system to be outgrown and powerless. Germany, given over to
theological speculation, crushed beneath the weight of the Napoleonic
wars, and torn by internal dissensions, gave but little hope that upon
her altars the dying fire of the great Reformation would ever again
flame forth as in the older and more heroic days.
In the United States, similar conditions prevailed, especially
during the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first of
the nineteenth. Forms of infidelity the most radical and revolting
prevailed throughout the land. Many of the leading statesmen, in
private at least, did not scruple to confess themselves atheists or
deists. Thomas Paine was the popular idol; his “Age of Reason” almost
as common as the Bible itself. The majority of the men taking part with
him in the founding of the government, with but few exceptions, held
theological sentiments akin to his, although declining to participate
in his violent and brutal assaults upon the Scriptures and the
institutions of Christian society.
[Illustration: BIRMINGHAM MEETING-HOUSE (ANCIENT).]
Speaking of the earlier days of the century, Chancellor Kent, in one
of his published works, declared that in his younger days the men of
his acquaintance in professional life who did not avow infidelity were
comparatively few. Bishop Meade, of Virginia, in his autobiography,
states that “scarcely a young man of culture could be found who
believed in Christianity.”
The colleges and universities were so filled with youthful skeptics
that when, in 1795, Timothy Dwight assumed the presidency of Yale,
he found but four or five willing to admit that they were members
of churches. So far did they go in their devotion to the French
infidelity prevalent at the time, that the seniors of the college were
commonly known among themselves by the names of Diderot, D’Alembert,
Robespierre, Rousseau, Danton, and the like. Harvard, Princeton,
William and Mary, the University of Virginia,—all the colleges
indeed,—were as thoroughly hotbeds of skepticism as nurseries of
learning.
The period, too, was one of internecine strife among the feeble
churches themselves. Divisions on doctrinal lines were incessant;
departures from the faith as numerous as they were disastrous. Of
the missionary spirit so gloriously characteristic of the nineteenth
century there was not even a trace. Up to 1793, not a missionary
society was in existence on either side of the ocean. The same was
true of hospitals, asylums, of every form of organized effort for the
reclamation of the masses or the amelioration of human ill.
In Boston, as late as 1811, men of literary or political distinction,
eager to listen to the marvelous revival preaching of the celebrated
Dr. Griffin, attended his services surreptitiously, or in disguise,
fearful lest knowledge of attendance upon religious services of such
vulgar character should detract from the dignity of their social
standing.
If, however, the times were bad, the outlook for Christianity dark,
the period, nevertheless, was not wholly without gleams of light.
The spiritual leaven imparted by Whitefield in his mighty preaching
tours, by Edwards, Dwight, Asbury, Griffin, and others of equally
heroic stamp, gradually began to work,—slowly at first, but with ever
accelerating movement,—until at last the triumphant successes of
the present century began their stately march. By degrees a new life
appeared among the churches, heralding the dawn of a new and brighter
day. Revivals of religion, many of them powerful and sweeping, broke
out in many parts of the country. Massachusetts, Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, were in succession the theatres of
movements which, before they had spent their force, had completely
revolutionized the conditions of unfaith, immorality, and spiritual
apathy so long prevailing. These upheavals of spiritual power,
continuing during the first twenty-five years of the century, laid
broad and deep the foundations of the mighty achievements of the church
which we are now to consider. How extensive, how wonderful, have been
these achievements can perhaps best be understood by a consideration of
the changed conditions marking the close of the century.
In the first place, that the people of the United States are a
religious people may be inferred from the amazing number and variety
of religions abounding and flourishing within our borders. It may be
doubted that in any other Christian country of the earth there can be
found so many varieties of religion, so many church organizations, so
many and diverse peculiarities of doctrine, polity, and usage, as here.
It is a land of churches; churches for whites, churches for blacks;
churches large and churches small; churches orthodox and churches
heterodox; churches Christian and churches pagan; churches Catholic
and churches Protestant; churches liberal and churches conservative,
Calvinistic and Armenian, Unitarian and Trinitarian; representing
nearly every phase of ecclesiastical and theological thought. As
Americans have distanced the world in the extent and variety of their
material inventions, so have they distanced the world in the extent
and variety of their theological and ecclesiastical forms. The state
cannot control the church, and the church is as free as the state. As
a man may freely transfer his citizenship from one State to another,
to each in turn, so may he, if he shall so desire, pass from one
ecclesiastical communion to another, until he shall have exhausted the
list. If, perchance, no one of the one hundred and forty-three distinct
denominations enumerated in the census tables shall suit him, there
remain innumerable separate, independent congregations, no one of
which lays claim to denominational name, creed, or connection, in some
one of which he yet may find an ecclesiastical home. The principle of
division, indeed, has been carried so far in America that it would be a
difficult task to find the religious body so small as, in the judgment
of some, to be incapable of further division.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE (PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL)
UNDER PROCESS OF ERECTION IN NEW YORK.]
It is to be observed, however, that the differences of the one hundred
and forty-three denominations into which our religious population is
divided are, in many instances, so slight that, should consolidation
be attempted, the one hundred and forty-three could easily be reduced
to a comparatively small number, and this with but little change
in doctrine, polity, or usage. Consolidation into organic union,
however, is hardly likely to occur in the near future, even were
such consolidation desirable. In the first place such a result would
be contrary to the genius of Protestantism, based, as it is, on the
absolute right of private judgment with respect to matters of faith
and morals, and, in the second place, it would be contrary to human
experience. “Religious controversies,” as Gladstone says, “do not, like
bodily wounds, heal by the genial forces of nature. If they do not
proceed to gangrene and mortification, at least they tend to harden
into fixed facts, to incorporate themselves into laws, character, and
tradition, nay, even into language; so that at last they take rank
among the data and presuppositions of common life, and are thought as
inexorable as the rocks of an iron-bound coast.” In religion, when men
separate, the severance is like the severance of the two early friends
of whom the poet speaks:—
“They parted, ne’er to meet again,
But neither ever found another
To free the hollow heart from paining.
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which have been rent asunder,
A dreary sea now rolls between.”
[Illustration: FATHER DAMIEN, MISSIONARY TO HAWAIIAN LEPER COLONY.]
If, however, the diversities are great—increasing rather than
diminishing—the “unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace” with
respect to all essentials of doctrine is as remarkable as the diversity
in the outward form. Never, indeed, since the dawn of Christianity,
were the members of the diversified bodies of the general church of
Christ in such thorough accord, in such closeness of attachment,
with such generous recognition of all that is good in each of the
several bodies, as now. Even the Roman Catholic Church, intolerant
in all lands where its sway is practically undisputed, in the United
States, at least, has caught something of the broader toleration of
Protestants, giving to its millions of communicants a better and truer
gospel than in those countries where it does not come into contact with
Protestantism, while freely coöperating with other churches in various
works of philanthropy and reform.
In the next place, that we are a religious, a Christian people may be
argued from the steady and enormous increase during the century of the
material and spiritual forces of the church of Christ, an increase
phenomenal even amid the wonders of a phenomenal century. Whether we
look at the increase of edifices or the multiplication of communicants,
the results in either case are sufficient for both congratulation and
amazement. Were it possible to obtain from the earlier records exact
statistics of the actual number of edifices and communicants existing
at the opening of the century, comparison would be comparatively easy.
Such, however, is not the case, the records having been imperfectly
kept and indifferently preserved. The census of 1890, indeed, was the
first to furnish exhaustive and really reliable results.
Taking that census as a basis, and adding to its figures those to be
obtained from the year books of the various bodies up to and including
1894, the religious strength of the United States may be summarized
as follows: Churches, 189,488; religious organizations, 158,695;
ordained ministers, 114,823; members or communicants, 15,217,948;
value of church property, $670,000,000; seating capacity of churches,
43,000,000, while in the 23,000 places where organizations which own
no edifices hold their services, accommodations could be found for
2,250,000 more. In the majority of the Protestant churches, at least
two services are held on each Sabbath; in the Catholic, six or seven.
Granting these premises, it is but reasonable to say that if, on any
given day, the entire population of the country should desire to attend
at least one religious service, accommodations could readily be found
for the entire number,—ample proof that the spiritual interests of the
millions are by no means neglected so far as privileges of worship are
concerned. It is a showing all the more remarkable when we consider
that all this vast provision is furnished on the basis of voluntary
offerings, the state contributing not a dollar for religious purposes.
It is probable that in these churches and edifices, on Sabbaths and
on weekdays, not less than 15,000,000 services are held each year, to
say nothing of sessions of Sunday-schools, meetings of Young People’s
Associations, and gatherings of kindred character. In them, too, not
less than ten millions of sermons and addresses on religious themes are
annually delivered.
The number of enrolled communicants, or members, however, by no means
expresses the real strength of the religious life of the nation. To
get at that, we must multiply each Protestant communicant by the 2.5
adherents allowed in all statistical calculations. Proceeding on this
basis, omitting for the time all Catholics, Jews, Theosophists, members
of Societies for Ethical Culture, Spiritualists, Latter-Day Saints, and
kindred bodies, and multiplying the 15,200,000 Protestant members by
2.5, we have over 50,000,000 as the total Protestant population of the
country. Adding to these 50,000,000 the Catholic population, estimated
by Catholic authorities as being 15 per cent. larger than the number
of Catholic communicants, we have 57,062,000 as the total Christian
population, leaving only about 7,000,000 who are neither communicants
nor adherents. Of the 7,000,000 opposed, for various reasons, to the
churches, comparatively few are to be reckoned as either infidels or
atheists; while, on the other hand, it is true that of the 57,000,000
reckoned as either communicants or adherents, millions are Christians
only in name, either never attending the services of the churches, or
at the best only at rare intervals. Gratifying as is this splendid
exhibit of religious devotion on the part of the American people, the
fact that there are millions in our land whose allegiance to Christian
doctrine is but nominal, with millions more upon whose lives religion
exercises no appreciable influence whatever, is a sufficient proof of
the enormous task yet confronting the churches of Christ, if we are
to stand before the nations as the great distinctive Christian nation
of the world. The stupendous gain, however, in ninety-four years, of
over 14,853,076 in Protestant churches alone is a record of religious
progress unparalleled in the history of the world.
[Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND. (WEST FRONT.)]
Advancing to the question of distribution of the religious forces
enumerated, we find that while these forces are distributed throughout
every State and under one hundred and forty-three denominational
names, they are, nevertheless, massed largely in a few denominations
and in a comparatively few States. Competent authorities estimate
that the five largest denominations comprise fully 60 per cent. of
the entire number of communicants; the ten largest, 75 per cent. With
respect to communicants, the Catholic Church is first, with 7,510,000;
the Methodist (all bodies) second, with 5,405,076; the Baptist third,
with 3,717,373; the Presbyterian fourth, with 1,278,332; the Lutheran
fifth, with 1,233,072.
[Illustration: YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION BUILDING,
PHILADELPHIA.]
With respect to population, reckoning the Catholic population at
7,510,000—which figures include children under ten years of age—and
adding to the communicant strength of the four other bodies mentioned
the 2.5 adherents allowed for each communicant, we have the following:
Methodist population, 18,918,466; Baptist, 12,990,805; Presbyterian,
5,525,162; Lutheran, 4,358,752; total Protestant population,
50,000,000; Catholic, 7,510,000.
With respect to value of church property, the Methodists are
first with $132,000,000; the Catholics second, $118,000,000; the
Presbyterians third, with $95,000,000; the Episcopalians fourth, with
$82,835,000; the Baptists fifth, with $82,390,000. The total value of
church property, reckoning all denominations, reaches the enormous sum
of $670,000,000.
To further particularize with respect to the lesser groups into which
the religious forces are divided is impossible within the limits
allowed for this chapter. To do it would require a volume instead of a
chapter. The following summary, however, may suffice to show the gain
of a century of religious effort:—
+-------+------------+----------------+--------------+
| Year. | Ministers. | Organizations. | Communicants |
| | | | or Members. |
+-------+------------+----------------+--------------+
| 1800 | 2,651 | 3,030 | 364,872 |
| 1850 | 25,555 | 43,072 | 3,529,988 |
| 1870 | 47,609 | 70,148 | 6,673,396 |
| 1880 | 69,870 | 97,090 | 10,065,963 |
| 1890 | 98,185 | 151,172 | 13,823,518 |
| 1894 | 114,823 | 158,695 | 15,217,948 |
+-------+------------+----------------+--------------+
When one remembers that one hundred years ago it was a common boast of
infidels that “Christianity would not survive two generations in this
country,” the above exhibit shows a religious progress unequaled in the
history of the kingdom of God in any land or any age.
Turning to the field of missionary effort, we find that the spread of
the Christian religion by missionary efforts, particularly during the
last one hundred years, forms one of the brightest chapters in the
records of human progress. Within this period, the triumphs of the
first three centuries have been far more than repeated.